YouSaid · the spoken record

Laurie Santos

lines on the record: 117
first: 2022-06-14
most recent: 2022-06-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Our genes get out there. And it doesn't care about you being happy. Like, it really wants you to be a craving, striving, always pushing for more genes in the next generation individual. And so I think we're built with a mind that's not necessarily geared towards making us happy. Like that wasn't natural selections intent. If that came along for the ride, great, but natural selection more wants us to like get all this stuff out there. And if our society tells us yachts are a thing, like brain's like, all right, yacht, that's what we need. Like, why don't we have one of these? What's going wrong? Crave. Yeah, so all these mechanisms, they're not built for us to feel nice. They're built for us to go after stuff.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, part of it is that we pick up on whatever reference points we see, right? And, you know, a capitalist society where we see stuff on social media and on the news is going to show us what it looks like to have high status, what it looks like to have happiness. And I think there are a lot of advertisers out there who do a good job of convincing us, like, you know, look how happy everything would be if you had X product that were trying to sell you. And so I think part of it's our culture shows us these kind of representations and those just naturally become reference points that our brain soaks up and tries to go after. I think also where evolved to go after the wrong stuff. We are products of natural selection, which is a blind process that, you know, if you kind of intentionalize it, it's kind of going for anything that will get you to survive and reproduce into the next generation. So natural selections like double down on all the resources, all the accolades, all the status, all that stuff, just in case, right? Because we really want to make sure.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“feeling angrier, I'm feeling scared, something's gone horribly wrong and I haven't done it right, when in fact, you know, there are times when it's normative to feel sad or frustrated or scared or something like that. I think we do need to work towards happiness. We can become much happier if we work towards it. But often the conception we have of how to do that isn't right. And that means we go about it wrong. And, you know, and that can be problematic in and of itself. And part because you're like, I'm seeking happiness. I'm seeking happiness. And that makes you not present. It might make you a little selfish. I mean, in and of itself feels very anxiety provoking and is causing negative emotions. And so doing it wrong. Ironically leading you away from happiness”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not really what a well balanced, healthy diet looks like, right? You know, you kind of have to overcome those craving urges and intuitions to go for something that's a little bit more well balanced. And I think happiness kind of works like that. Like you got to put some effort into overcome the natural intuitions, which might not be leading you towards the stuff that matters. The problem though is, and I think where we go astray when we're seeking out happiness, is that, again, we have these misconceptions, right? We think happiness is about achieving these accolades. It's not. We often think happiness is about self-care and treating ourselves and giving ourselves these luxuries. It's not. In fact, if anything, it's about doing nice things for others. That gives you more of a kind of happiness bang for your buck than like spending time on yourself. And I think it's about this notion of happiness that's only positive emotions all the time. I think we each have this kind of misconception that's a little on the like toxic positivity spectrum where we're like, if I'm feeling sad.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think yes and no. I mean, yes, in the sense that I think we, you know, happiness takes effort, right? Like I think happiness takes work. Like all good things you got to put in some work to get there. And part of that work is understanding the misconceptions. But part of that work is like we don't often have the best instincts about what will make us happy. The things that we kind of want to do in life are not necessarily the things we're really going to enjoy or like or that will give us a meaningful life. So I think we have to fight our misconceptions and we have to sometimes violate our intuitions about what to do to live a healthy life. I think for me this works a lot like fitness and healthy eating, right? You know, like the things I crave and I'm drawn to, you know, maybe there's some people out there who crave salad in like a well-balanced protein. But for me, I crave like, you know, like the, you know, candy and chocolate and fried and greasy things, right? Like eventually I'll get sick of that. But my instinct is to like go for that stuff, right?”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And these are what social scientists call the kind of affective component of happiness or the emotional component of happiness. That's the kind of happy in your life and the kind of cognitive component of happiness. You think your life is pretty good. And most of the strategies I talk about in my podcast and on my course, it's like we're trying to maximize both of those at once. They won't always be the same. My residential college dean, who I live with, she and her wife just had a new baby. And I think that's a moment where like, you know, happy with your life, oh my gosh, you have a new baby. Like the newborn, this is great. So much meaning and stuff. But in your life, there's like new dirty diapers. You're not sleeping. You know, like, so there's these moments where they dissociate. And I think they dissociate in the other direction too. I think there are lots of cases of those rich people we were just talking about who feel, you know, in their life they have every luxury in flying first class and all these things, but with their life, they still feel like there's some emptiness and something real that's missing.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, there's a billion different, you know, we could have a very, very long podcast episode if we were discussing all the ways we could think about happiness. In my own work, I tend to use the social scientist definition, which is thinking about happiness as a sense of being happy in your life and with your life. So being happy in your life is just having lots of positive emotions like joy, contentment, awe, you know, like those kinds of things. And at least relatively speaking, less negative emotions, not no negative emotions because a full and fulfilling human experience probably has some sadness and anger and frustration and fear. Like you wouldn't be human if you didn't have that. But en masse, it feels pretty good to be in your life. And that means you have lots of positive emotions. The second part is being happy with your life. And that's sort of the answer to the question. All things considered how satisfied are you with your life? You know, are you happy? Do you have like, do you have purpose and meaning in this sort of broad?”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Door when your spouse said,'I love you, it doesn't it lacks the same oomph.' So even these best moments in life, if they repeat over time, kind of get boring. And this is what researchers call hedonic adaptation. It's the reason why even when we get the good things, even if they stick around, we stop appreciating them as much because we kind of just get used to them. And these two things together, this kind of reference point comparisons and hedonic adaptation, it means even if your life is going as well as you could have possibly expected, you'll stop noticing that it's going so well over time.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's kind of bias number one about why we never get there. But there's a second bias that's just this dumb feature of our mind, which is that we get used to stuff. You start earning a million dollars and you get all the stuff that comes with it. In week one, when you get a nice house with a nice shower and a nice car that feels good, but by week two or three, that's just your shower. It's just your car. It's just your house. You've stopped noticing all the great things about it. And this is like, you know, a bad feature of human psychology for all the fantastic things in life, even the best things in life, we will wind up getting used to. Dan Gilbert, who's a psychologist at Harvard who writes about this stuff, uses the example of like, you know, the first time your child says mommy or daddy or the first time your spouse, you're totally in love with says, I love you. You know, that was a moment. Like that was, you know, you wrote about it on social media and your journal. That was, but, you know, last Thursday when your kid said, you know, mommy or daddy or, you know, like running out.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Us feel good. We always look to reference points that make us feel crappy. I was doing some consulting with a basketball team and I was going through, you know, hey, what's your reference point for what's a good basketball player's salary? And they're thinking like, you know, oh, Steph Curry, who's like, you know, the highest paid, you know, I'm like, what's your reference point for height? Now it's not Steph Curry anymore because he's sure. It's like, you know, Taco Fail, who's like, you know, seven foot, you know, player for the Celtics. And it's like, you instant, your brain instantly goes to the one reference point that would make you feel bad about yourself. So what kind of body you have might not be the same reference point as who's successful in your industry versus who's making a lot of money versus who's a really good spouse, right? The comparison point you pick is always somebody that's going to make you feel like crap. And that makes sense. You know, we want to have something to shoot for, but it means we never feel good with what we have. We're always finding reference points that make us feel bad.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. There's kind of two biases. One is this reference group bias, right? Which is that our brains are just not built to pay attention to anything objectively, right? We just pay attention relative to stuff. So, hey, how much money should you earn? You don't have like an objective number. You have like, you know, I'm a professor in an Ivy League institution. I'm like, well, I should earn about as much as other professors at Ivy League institutions. Like you're a podcast or you're probably thinking how much should you earn? Like, well, what is the average podcast? Or what is a good podcaster earn? I kind of want to earn that, right? So we never think in objective terms. We're always thinking relative to something. And that, what we think of as our reference point changes pretty quickly. You know, as soon as you become a millionaire, now your reference point isn't what I was earning in grad school. Like now your reference point is like other millionaires and you might not be as rich as other millionaires, right? They might have a better yacht than you or a better vacation house than you. And what's a dumb thing about our minds is that we never look to reference points that make”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Within the hundred million, it's like, well, I guess I have to become a billionaire. Once I can say I'm a billionaire, then I'll really be happy. And at no point do they go through these steps and think like, wait a minute, you know, the last five carrots, you know, like I put for myself when I got to the carrot, it didn't work in the way that I thought, you know, maybe I'm wrong. And so, yeah, so this is our bias of affective forecasting. We kind of get wrong, not the direction. We kind of know good things are going to make us feel good, but we definitely get wrong the intensity and the duration that that boost in happiness is going to last.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get as happy as you thought, and you don't think, well, I was wrong. It wasn't salary, I should go for something else. You think, ah, it wasn't enough money if I get the next promotion and the next promotion. And, you know, it's one thing to think this, you know, if you're earning like an average American income, but what's funny is even if you look at incredibly wealthy people, they have the same mistaken intuitions about money. On my podcast, The Happiness Lab, I interviewed this great guy, Clay Cockrell, who's a wealth psychologist. He's a like mental health professional that works with the rich and famous. And, you know, first of all shocking is that he has a job, right? You know, based on our misconceptions, it's like, you know, they're incredibly wealthy should have no mental health problems. But they have a ton in one of the biggest ones he sees is exactly this, like these wealthy folks thought, like, when I become a millionaire, then I'll be happy. And then that didn't work. You're like, well, maybe I need in the tens of millions. I need to be able to buy multiple vacation houses or for people who work.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, this is a bias that researchers call the arrival fallacy. It's really like the happily ever after fallacy. Like when this happens, I'll be happy. And, you know, it's not like we're mispredicting. You know, you get a new house and like, yeah, that feels good, but it doesn't feel as good as you're going to think. And it doesn't feel good for as long as you're going to think. These are errors in what we call affective forecasting. You're forecasting that you're going to be way happier. But we're off about the intensity. It's not as good as we predict usually. And we're off about the duration. It doesn't feel good for as long as we tend to predict. And that means we're setting ourselves up for some disappointment, right? And I think this is the kind of thing that happens for the like, I'll be happy when kind of people, right? You know, it's like I'll be happy when I get a promotion. And then you get the promotion. You're like, well, that didn't work. I guess I need another promotion. This happens a lot with salary, right? Like I'll be happy if I get a raise. I'll be happy if I get this amount of money. And you get there and you don't.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things. And yeah, you get a little happiness boost for a little while, but it doesn't seem to last. Lasting happiness comes from something else. And so, yeah, so the problem isn't that we're not working at it. It's that we have these misconceptions about the kinds of things that are really going to make us feel better. But, you know, we really need some work to figure out the right sorts of things that will make us feel good.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think it's important to start with this idea that we put so much effort in, right? Because I think you could sometimes think about happiness of like, oh, we're all not feeling so happy. And that's because we're not trying. We need to try more. And I think that's not the problem. I think people are putting tremendous energy into the kinds of things that they think are going to make them feel good, feel successful, you know, would lead to a meaningful life. But then even though we're putting in as much effort, we're kind of not getting anywhere. And I think the issue is that our minds, the way I like to talk about on the podcast is that our minds lie to us about the kinds of things that make us happy. We have these strong intuitions that, you know, if this would happen, I would be happily ever after, right? You know, if like I have the perfect job or if I get a higher salary or if I get a certain accolade at work, if I become partner for my students, if I get perfect grades, people think if those things happen, that they'll feel happier. And, you know, there's studies that look at people who get those wonderful.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But part of happiness really is about being present. You know, there's so much evidence that when we're mind wandering, when we're not fully present, that that's a time when we're also not very happy. It's one of the reasons that techniques like meditation, which are primarily techniques for intentionally paying attention to the present moment, often with a certain kind of attitude, like a non-judgment kind of attitude. Those kinds of practices make us happier in part because the non-judgment, but in part just because we're there, we're present, we're paying attention to life, and just the act of paying attention, even if it doesn't feel good, like even if you're kind of paying attention to something boring, like that presence can wind up improving our well-being over time. So finding ways to control the things that are stealing our attention and preventing us from being present can be really good ways to boost our happiness overall.”
2022-06-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT